SWL Currencies

Aurum – This is the new FC Points you buy with Cash, or trade for in Game.

Marks of Favor – These are earned for doing missions or other tasks in game. Or you can trade for them.

Anima Shards – These are earned from Monster drops and Mission turn-ins and are used mostly for empowerment of your weapons.

Yes, Trading for Money is a thing! They even have a Currency exchange!

Currency Exchange

The one Currency that I don’t seem to see any kind of trading option is Anima Shards. Seeing how this is the one currency needed for empowerment of your items, I can see this being an issue. It can keep people from upgrading gear if they don’t have enough, but then again, since his is a currency that drops off creatures you should be out there killing anyway (And awarded for missions) it can also be a way to keep people engaged in the world. Not sure if that is intended, but it will be a side effect at the very least.

Looking at the exchange screen above, you can see one side is for wanting to BUY Aurum from others. and the other side is your willingness to SELL Aurum. Keep in mind that the MoF value is NOT the total sale price, rather the individual Unit Price. So someone is selling 120 Aurum at 52 MoF/each = 6240 Marks of Favor you’d have to spend in order to gain that 120 Aurum they have for sale.

Similarly, someone wants to BUY 245 Aurum, and is willing to spend 42 Marks of Favor each = 10290 Marks of Favor you could GAIN!

What I don’t know, since I have not partaken of this function yet, is how much of a cut the exchange will take from these transactions? I have heard there is not cut, but after the fiasco that happened during the opening week, they may have added something to curb the people working the system.

The Auction house takes a 5% deposit, and if it sells it will keep that 5%. If it doesn’t sell, they still keep that 5%!

Auction House Rules…

Speaking of the Auction House, it looks like you are limited to 10 items that you can place on the AH at a time. I’ve never been that much of an AH player before, so I never knew if there was a similar rule in effect for TSW. I MIGHT be selling certain things on the AH in this game though. Depends on the quality of drops I get from my mission turn ins.

Something I found out in Chat, is that the bottom line on that screenshot shows your purchases. When you buy things, and you get your mail saying it has been delivered to your storage, this is the place to check first! It appears you are limited to 10 items to buy at a time before you have to claim them and store them properly. (UPDATE: PATRONS get to use this remote access feature. If you are not a Patron, you have to visit the Auctioneer in Mall-gartha.)

Something to mention, Aurum is Account Wide. Marks of Favor and Anima Shards are per character. Which brings up another thing… Transferring items amongst your alts…

Trading outright is not allowed unless you are a patron. (UPDATE: Non-patrons can freely trade once they hit level 15.) And on top of that, Attaching items to the Mail is no longer a thing. ((NOTE – The “Take All Attachments” button on the main mail menu can be used to collect any money you may have from an AH Sale.))

Please leave a message after the beep… BEEP!

So that leaves Cabal Banks and the AH. If you join a Cabal, you’ll need to make sure that you can add your alts to the cabal too, if you want to be able to use the cabal bank to have a quick free trade.

Alternatively, you can start your own cabal, and since this is a free to play game, you can create another account , to add another character to the cabal so you can then add your other alts on your main account to your own cabal and then just make free use of the cabal bank in order to trade freely amongst your alts. This can also work if you have a good friend that you trust to add to your cabal, or be the trusted friend in THEIR Cabal!

Or there’s the AH, and I don’t know if there are restrictions on buying your own items from another character on your account. I know Blizzard had this restriction for WoW, so I just assume it’s a thing elsewhere. If anyone can test this for me, that would be greatly appreciated! (UPDATE: It appears that I cannot view my own items on the AH, even on another character, so they do appear to have placed a restriction in place for this eventuality.)

That just leaves Anima Shards to talk about. Anima shards drop off monsters you fight in the field, and are awarded for completing missions. You can sell items you acquire in the field for Anima Shards at vendors as well. What are they good for? Well, they are used in empowering your gear, and I haven’t found any vendors that deal in them either.

What I have found is another currency used at certain vendors and i’m told it’s Third Age Fragments. These are dropped from the special Agarthan Loot Bags that drop once you hit level 15. (aka – Loot Lanterns!)

One of the Third Age Fragment Vendors

UPDATE:

I appear to have failed to have noticed something else in the game. If you open your inventory, there is a button called WALLET. Click that and you should get a screen similar to this:

Do they take Google Pay…?

I’ve already covered the top 4, the next ones are specials. You are given the amounts shown above for free. Dungeons replenish on a daily basis, Patrons getting 18, and Non-Patrons getting 12, so I would assume Lairs and Scenarios would as well. (UPDATE: Scenario/Lair keys do replenish Daily as well. Non-Patrons receive 2 Scenario keys per day, and Patrons receive 3. Non-Patrons receive 3 Lair Keys, and Patrons Receive 6.) Lairs MIGHT be weekly though… I don’t know, I haven’t had a chance to get to lair’s yet.

Cache keys are going to be a ‘meat-and-potatoes’ staple of the new F2P economy to keep the servers running. So you should be able to buy those at least. WHERE is the question I can’t seem to get answered yet though. the other keys are also supposed to be purchasable too, but again, I can’t seem to get an answer on where, yet. I will update again if/when I find out.

UPDATE: To buy Cache Keys, right-click on a Loot-Lantern in your inventory and the option to buy more appears on the right side of the Cache Window:

Cash for Cache keys..?

Please note that there is no bulk discount for keys! They are a Flat 150 Aurum cost across all quantities! How much does that cost in Real World dough?

Gotta keep these servers Hummin’ somehow, right?

If you take away the ‘Bonus Aurum’ from the equation, you’ll see that the cost is about 1 penny per Aurum. So the 150 Aurum to buy a single Cache Key equates to about $1.50 each. Considering you get one of these a day if you are a patron, that means you are receiving about $45 worth of content each month just with the one key a day!

So how does this compare to the old TSW FunCom Points?

Aurum vs FC points…. Ready…… FIGHT!

FC points didn’t give us the ‘Extra Bonus’ in green numbers to the side like they do for Aurum. BUT… if you include the ‘Bonus Aurum’ in your calculations, you see that at the top end, you end up at the same value Aurum-to-FC Point. Of course I have to take the values out to the 4th decimal place (Hundredths of a cent) in order to even SEE this..!

I see the difference as minimal. At the low end, if we received 600 Aurum, I can get 4 Cache Keys, but since we only get 500, I’ll only be able to get 3 and have 50 left over to play with on the Exchange. So there is that, at least.

So these are the currencies that I’ve found in SWL so far. I’m sure there will be more later on, as there was for the Whispering Tide event in TSW. I hope this article proved to be informative for you.

Thanks for stopping by! Let me know if you find anything else! And I’ll See you in the Secret World!